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The British government has created the world's largest marine reserve around the Pitcairn Islands, one of the world's most remote locations. Offering unprecedented protection to more than 1,200 species of marine mammals, fish and sea birds in the South Pacific, the 322,138-square-mile reserve is located is approximately three-and-half times the size of the United Kingdom.

According to a new study, bottlenose dolphin colonized the Mediterranean after the last Ice Age, about 18,000 years ago. Leading marine biologists collaborated in the study, the most detailed ever conducted into the genetic structure of the Mediterranean’s bottlenose dolphin population to date.

A team led and funded by Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen has located the Musashi on the seabed of the Sibuyan Sea in the Philippines. Allen, 62, whose father served in World War II, says his research team discovered the Musashi's wreckage on March 1 and uploaded a number of pictures of what he described as the ship’s rusty bow, with a Japanese seal clearly visible.

The Wetpixel Oceanic Whitetip Shark Expedition 2015 will run from 12 to 18 April 2015, and will be based on Cat Island (flights into New Bight airport (TBI)).

The trip includes:

7 days 6 nights hotel accommodation hotel on double occupancy (single occupancy available at a supplement). 5 full days of oceanic whitetip shark encounters. Airport pickup/drop-off from TBI to the hotel. Daily Dive Boat Shuttle from the hotel to the boat. Continental breakfast, lunch, snacks, and beverages on the boat. Tanks, air fills, weights, and weight belts.

Her pioneering work in marine conservation and shark behaviour helped to reveal that sharks were not the stupid and vicious animals they were reputed to be. Though she also did research on fish, her main focus was to improve the public image of sharks.

She began her research in the 1950s, and her fascination with the marine world inspired her to find ways of conducting research underwater. She was one of the first to do so while using SCUBA, and also made over seventy deep dives using a submersible, into the deep ocean.

Upon conducting a root cause analysis, we suspected that the issue most likely stemmed from an issue with the battery contacts. This problem can result in lower-than-expected battery life or, in some cases, the computer resetting underwater. We then changed to using full gold plating on all contacts in January 2014. Zero problems have been reported on gold-plated units, confirming our suspicions.

Easy Steps You Can Take

While gold plating (as on all Petrels since Jan. 2014) is the best solution, these steps will allow the older contacts to be used trouble-free.

A new eco-tourism project has just been launched on the spectacular coast of the White Sea, from the village of Chupa. Run by Vasily Efimov and Yulia Suprunenko, it offered tours of the sea coast and forest, seal and bird watching, and a trip to see the beluga whales of Nilma, for the first time this winter. The programs for this spring and summer will soon be announced.

The Dead Sea has been found to be receding at a rate of more than 3.3 feet (1 meter) every year.

The idea of linking the two bodies of water has been around for more than a century. The project began to move ahead two years ago after the World Bank determined it is possible to use the Red Sea to replenish the shrinking Dead Sea after years of studying whether such a connecting lifeline could work.

The desalination plant will produce at least 80 million cubic meters annually. Israel will buy at a cost up to 40 million cubic meters. The rest will go to Aqaba.

Researching the intelligence of the grey bamboo shark a team of researchers at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn, Germany showed that sharks could be trained to recognise and remember shapes for an extended period of time.

First juvenile sharks were subjected to three different cognition experiments, one at a time, and then tested to see how long the sharks could remember their training.

Florida again led the United States in shark attacks last year, with 28 incidents and no fatalities. The vast majority of the Florida incidents were minor ones in which a shark quickly bites an arm or leg in poor visibility water, releasing it as soon as the shark realizes its prey isn't a fish.

"Most of them are better called bites than attacks," said George Burgess, curator of the International Shark Attack File. "They're the equivalent of dog bites."